Heroin: The needle and the damage done

On Jan. 24 we received the following press release from the Portsmouth Police Department.

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By Howard Altschiller

seacoastonline.com

By Howard Altschiller

Posted Feb. 2, 2014 at 2:00 AM

By Howard Altschiller

Posted Feb. 2, 2014 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

On Jan. 24 we received the following press release from the Portsmouth Police Department.

"At 4:00 PM on 1-22-14 the Portsmouth Police and Fire Departments responded to an apartment in Portsmouth for a 37 year old male not breathing. The male was transported to the Portsmouth Hospital for treatment. The male was pronounced dead at 4:40PM.

"The name of the deceased 37 year old male is Simone Sclafani. He is not a resident of Portsmouth and, at the time of his death, did not have a permanent address. Even though the Medical Examiner has not yet determined a cause of death the Portsmouth Police Department is pursuing the incident as a heroin overdose."

Reporter Elizabeth Dinan wrote the story, which included a warning from Deputy Police Chief Corey MacDonald about dangerous heroin in the city that had caused two additional overdoses. He urged heroin users to seek treatment. "You may not get a second chance," MacDonald said.

Photographer Ioanna Raptis thought Sclafani's name sounded familiar and when she checked her records she found she and Dinan had met him in December when they reported on and photographed an art therapy class for inmates at the Rockingham County House of Corrections.

In the class, inmates wrote a note to their future selves.

"Dear Sammy," Sclafani wrote, "Your (sic) a great person. Stay positive and keep positive people around you. You will succeed in everything you do. Love, me."

Raptis photographed the note because it seemed so hopeful to her.

In that same class, Sclafani cut out words and phrases from magazines he found inspiring: "ambitious," "a new way," "discover small joys" and "stay extraordinary."

That story ran Dec. 15, 2013. Sclafani was released from jail on Jan. 12 and he was found dead in Portsmouth 10 days later.

If his art was a true expression of his intentions, Sclafani had hoped to do better when he got out of jail. For reasons we can never know, he instead injected himself with heroin and it killed him.

Whenever we look beyond the superficial label of junkie we find a human being with hopes and dreams similar to our own, but unable to reach them because they are shackled by addiction.

Last year, Joey Cresta wrote a series of stories on Seacoast families devastated by heroin.

Kim Lindsey, the mother of Portsmouth native Matt Danforth, who died at the age of 28, just 24 hours after getting out of jail, described watching her son going through withdrawal, what he called "dope sickness."

"That is brutal, absolutely brutal, to watch your son go through that," she said. "It's even more brutal watching them go through that than actually seeing them high. I just wanted to lay down with him and just hold him and make him better, like I could when he was young. I couldn't do that. Couldn't touch him. They can't be touched when they're like that. Oh God, it was horrible."

Cresta interviewed Tony Carter in prison, where he was serving up to four years for burglarizing the Hanscom's Truck Stop on the Route 1 Bypass in Portsmouth. Carter grew up in Eliot, Maine, started smoking pot at 10 and began shooting heroin at 15.

Carter said he has tried and failed to get off heroin many times.

"I'll be all set and then I'll use because I hurt, or had a bad day, or had a great day," he said. "I'll use if it's raining. I'll use if it's sunny. I'll use if it's snowing. I'll use at night. I'll use in the morning. I'll use on a great day. I'll use on a bad day. Every time I've relapsed it's been in different circumstances."

Some locals killed by heroin remain a mystery, known to us by name and face, like the haunting Svetlana Filippenko, who died of an overdose at age 22 in November 2012. The woman who sold her the heroin is doing eight years to life in prison.

I've had Neil Young's song "The Needle and the Damage Done" in my head since reading Sclafani's story, especially the lyric: "Every junkie's like a setting sun."

When I was city editor at The Standard Times in New Bedford, Mass., I had before and after photos of a young beauty queen who, 10 years later, was toothless and shriveled as a dried apple at her arraignment on drug charges. The photos were a reminder of heroin's ability to destroy youth, beauty, health, hopes, dreams, friends, family, love — everything good in life.

After nearly 30 years of reporting on heroin, my advice to parents and caregivers is to speak to children about the dangers of heroin as soon as they are old enough to understand. At some point in their lives someone is going to offer them heroin or some other heroin-like narcotic and they need to understand that the first snort or injection will be their first step toward hell on earth.

If you think it couldn't happen to your child, you need to stop kidding yourself.